


Without Flinching

by akire_yta



Series: prompt ficlets [271]
Category: thunderbirds are go
Genre: Gen, Post-Legacy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-07-15 08:50:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7215751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akire_yta/pseuds/akire_yta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>writerdarkflamespyre asked for:  could I possibly trouble you for some Thunderbirds Are Go, with John as the main subject and/or Virgil? </p><p>(title from the Jim Butcher quote: “When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching -- they are your family. ” )</p>
            </blockquote>





	Without Flinching

 

John’s been expecting this call pretty much since he heard Kayo, voice like a knife of ice, announce over comms that they had a visitor.  Maybe even before.  Part of what made him so good as Thunderbird Five was that his brain never stopped, always whirring away on background processes that pieced together scraps of information until it could present him with a whole picture.

The revelation of her family, while news, was still somehow not _surprising_.  That lack of shock helped him move through his reaction quickly to deal with the situation as it was now, not as it had been before.

Virgil had argued.  Virgil had debated. Virgil had always hated secrets, and he’d reacted with shock and hurt, and the in the first-of-five-steps kind of angry.

And now Virgil was coming to see him.

John could count on one finger the number of times Virgil has been up to Five. 

When Five was fresh and new and gleaming, every edge crisp, every line sharp, smelling faintly of ozone as the microscopic layer of dust on the fitout burned off and the station settled into her orbit, their father had demanded that each boy learn the other Birds, a tacit acknowledgement of the interchangability of his pieces in the wider play.

Incongruously, John is reminded of the fact that, though Kayo was right in the middle of the five of them, in terms of both average age and stupid teenage games, in his lifetime Jeff Tracy had never granted her a Thunderbird, never included her in these cross-training missions.

Kayo learned anyway, in simulator and from copying their notes and flight logs.  John wondered if Jeff had known, what he would think of that his son’s gave their sister her own Bird.

As the space elevator docks with a silent reverberation felt through the bulkheads, John realizes he doesn’t care if Jeff doesn’t approve.  Scott may always hold up ‘what would their father do’ as a benchmark, but John knows such measures no longer apply.  She’s _theirs_ , not the niece of the Hood, or an even better security agent than her own father had been.  She’s not a pawn, or a double-agent, or expendable.

She’s a Thunderbird.  

As John propels himself gracefully down to the airlock, another background process spits out its conclusion: Virgil knows all this too.  Hence his anger, his his need to speak to his brother, face-to-face, not over the comm.

The subtle tension John had been carrying ever since they’d reclaimed their island home started to ease.  He and Virgil were on the same page, just as they had always been.  Virgil just needed to say his piece, and then he’d listen to what he already knows.  They’d played these roles before, dozens of times as they’d grown.

The airlock cycled, and John drifted forward to welcome his brother home.


End file.
